Not intelligence, precisely (you can be a very competent Nazi) but creativity, specifically. You need to be able to think like the adversary to do what O’Brien does, and the very crimethink mindset that defines the regime makes cultivating such people impossible.
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Replying to @lawnerdbarak @trans_victory and
The antidote to that is supposed to be doublethink But even the narration from Winston's POV post-conversion points out that doublethink is fucking hard work
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Replying to @arthur_affect @lawnerdbarak and
"Doublethink" is one of those concepts that 1984 has made into a very sinister meme that isn't really Like these same chuds really enjoy the apocryphal quote "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it", don't they
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Replying to @arthur_affect @lawnerdbarak and
Oh Chu, what you don’t realize is that you are in The Party. One cannot know this when they don’t have any original thoughts, & simply repeat the Party line, even if for purely performative reasons, social status, mating tactics, whatever. Orwell’s relevance is significant.
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Replying to @JeremyPhilosoph @arthur_affect and
We don’t need to cancel genius because mediocre cultural commentators who simply repeat slogans, and cannot create their own material, decide that great writers who put their finger on things they hold sacred must be ignored. So sorry, thoughts and prayers.
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Replying to @JeremyPhilosoph @arthur_affect and
Of course, The Party doesn’t need to be the government. Orwell didn’t realize that. It can be high society, or your peers, or a number of private institutions. But it’s unlikely Party Members have an interest in identifying their own ideas.
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Replying to @JeremyPhilosoph @lawnerdbarak and
Which side of the argument here is looking at mathematicians trying to explain what they've learned about abstract algebra and telling them to shut the fuck up
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Replying to @arthur_affect @JeremyPhilosoph and
God the state of it *Do* you have even one opinion you didn't get from your public school education and from your peer group? Do you yourself actually make any effort to learn interesting things from outside your bubble? Cause it really doesn't come off that way
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Replying to @arthur_affect @JeremyPhilosoph and
Like you people's Orwell fandom even transparently comes from Animal Farm and 1984 being assigned reading in public school curriculums (with a specific framing from being assigned during the Cold War)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @JeremyPhilosoph and
You haven't even read another book *by him*, much less seriously engaged with anyone building off of him or critiquing him
2 replies 1 retweet 7 likes
(The statement that "Orwell didn't recognize the Party didn't have to be the government" is nonsense, for one thing, but if you actually wanted to do a dive into stuff he thought about groupthink in arts & culture you'd have to read another book)
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